Having completed its first day in orbit, the Polaris Dawn mission is preparing to make the first private spacewalk in history. Two astronauts are scheduled to exit the Dragon spacecraft Resilience at 2:23 am EDT and here’s how to watch.
Lifting off at 5:23 am EDT on September 10, 2024, from mission Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket, the Polaris Dawn has already entered the history books. Going into a highly elliptical orbit, the spacecraft reached an altitude of 1,400 km (870 miles) – making it the farthest that any human has traveled from Earth since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
In addition, it passed briefly through the radioactive Van Allen Belt before performing a thruster burn that set it into a 190 x 700 km (118 x 435 mile) orbit.
Since then, the crew have been preparing for the upcoming spacewalk by gradually lowering the cabin pressure from sea level with a normal atmospheric composition to 0.6 ATM pressure with a very high oxygen concentration. The purpose of this is to match the operational pressure of the Extravehicular Activity (EVA) suits as well as avoid the danger of the bends if there is nitrogen gas dissolved in the bloodstream.
Polaris Dawn Watch
Prior to the spacewalk, the crew of four will don their space suits and the cabin will be depressurized. After opening the forward hatch, Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis will leave the craft on tethers while the other two crew members remain behind. The entire walk is expected to last two hours.
If you want to watch, you can tune into the YouTube feed above or on the SpaceX website.
Source: SpaceX
